Tech —

Home row heroes: alternative keyboard apps for Android

Five apps that are probably better than the keyboard you're using now

With all the various OEM versions of Android available, it's likely you may get stuck with an onscreen keyboard you're not too fond of. And if you're not in sync with your keyboard, it can become frustrating to use your Android phone or tablet. Fortunately, one of the cool things about Android is its keyboard is a modular component. Don't like it? Replace it! Google allows alternatives in the Google Play store.

So if you're feeling a little disappointed what your phone has offered you, here are a few other Android keyboard applications worth checking out.

SwiftKey is a heavily predictive keyboard app. It begins by asking which language you prefer before it fully installs. Then, it inquires about your typing style—whether you’re precise or rapid—and asks whether it can watch your keyboard input within apps like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and your RSS feed for a better gauge on how you type.

When it comes to typing, SwiftKey does best at assuming what you’re about to type next. Whenever you press the space bar after inserting a punctuation mark, SwiftKey will auto fill with the word it thinks you’re going to use. For users who utilize their Android devices primarily for business, this may prove more accommodating for firing off the same e-mail replies over and over again, but in some instances it can be annoying having to hit the backspace key after every other sentence.

Enlarge/ It looks and acts just like the official Android 4.1 Jelly Bean keyboard.

When Samsung’s Touchwiz keyboard began frustrating me to no end, I decided to ditch it and install this freebie instead. Jelly Bean Keyboard instantly overlays the Android 4.1 keyboard on your device, regardless of what Android version you’re currently running. It includes haptic feedback and learns your typing history, which helps it make faster predictions. It also includes a split keyboard for thumb-typing on a tablet. It's just generally more user-friendly than some of the included OEM keyboards—precisely as Google intended.

The free version is ad-supported, but there's a Pro version for $2.99. That supports theming, font changes, and other customizations. You can even grab several language packs if you need a Spanish or Arabic keyboard.

Enlarge/ The default GO Keyboard skin is tame, but themes can get a lot crazier than this.

GO Keyboard’s popularity is bolstered by the more than 60 different keyboard themes and plugins it contains. This app allows users to set the keyboard to whatever language they prefer, or even revert back to the good old days of T9 rather than the normal QWERTY affair. Users can customize key height, dictionary management, and different keyboard layout styles. And as an added bonus, there’s a precise highlighter tool available, which makes it easier to scroll through documents and delete very specific characters and text—something that can be extremely frustrating with just a finger on a touchscreen.

Though it’s not available in the Google Play Store, Swype is one of the more popular third-party keyboard applications users can side-load onto their Android handset. The app relies on a continued finger motion to type out words, which can come in handy for multitaskers. It also allows users to just simply type out words if they want to or utilize Dragon’s voice recognition technology for voice typing. As an aside, some devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S III, already feature native Swype functionality.

Kii Keyboard is a brand new keyboard application that's chock full of features, including smart keyboard predictions, SwiftKey-like word prediction, and Swype gesture input. It also boasts a split-keyboard layout, iOS 6 emoji input, and the ability to use any picture as a keyboard background. For users who aren't too keen on the new Jelly Bean keyboard, Kii Keyboard also enables you to revert back to the Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard with built-in themes.

While the app is still in beta and fairly new to the Google Play Store, we look forward to downloading the premium suite once it becomes available. Kii Keyboard's wealth of features and included themes definitely gives it a leg up over other keyboard apps available for Android. It'll need to work out the kinks on some of its features—like the very intense haptic feedback and too predictive text—but the plethora of positive reviews on its Google Play page already shows this app is rearing to be a major contender.

91 Reader Comments

One major problem with Android keyboards is the utter lack of adaption for languages other than English. Trying to write German drives me up the walls since compound words are ripped apart more often than not.

Still, the problems with typing languages other than English are more than obvious when using the on-screen keyboard. English works quite nicely.

I use Swiftkey with 3 different languages enabled, one of them German, I don't experience any of the problems you describe. I'm a swede working for an american company in Austria so I text in all three languages and Swiftkey happily jumps between all three. It even handles bastardized sentences with more languages really well too.

Nothing about Hacker's Keyboard? I figure Ars would at least partly have the type of audience who could use something meant for SSHing, as it supports a full-scale keyboard with proper tabbing support.

+1 for Hacker's keyboard. It's my full-time keyboard on my tablet, and on my phone I switch over to it frequently enough. JB Keyboard Free has been pretty solid for other usual phone stuff.

The Samsung 'swype' style keyboard that's been in the latest SGS2 JB leaks has been terrible, but I haven't cared for Swype since the WinMo 6.5 days. Maybe I haven't used swype enough for it to learn my habits, but it's frustrating when swyping a word and it gets it completely wrong, then you have to tap around to fix it.

I've been using MessagEase and enjoying it. It looks like an old T9 layout, but you swipe between buttons to select letters instead of pressing buttons multiple times. I've used SwiftKey and Swype, but I've found MessagEase to be more accurate (even accounting for SwiftKey's auto-completion).

All these keyboards use QWERTY. QWERTY was not designed for mobile and results in buttons that are way too tiny for many people to type on accurately.

I use Big Buttons keyboard because the buttons are larger and my typing speed and accuracy jumped immediately.

Keyboards like this have been attempted several times, but they rely on a false assumption that normal QWERTY keyboards are fixed in size. They are not.

Most QWERTY keyboards avoid typos by understanding how you physically type (Swiftkey calls this a heatmap, and you can view it if you're curious), and also understanding that if you just typed the letter Q, you're more than likely going to type the letter U after it. Thus, accidentally pressing I or Y instead of U will still result in a U, making the U key "bigger" than it actually is (and in fact, bigger than even your "Big Buttons" keyboard).

The point is that the buttons do not need to be big, since modern keyboards are able to discern what you type even from pressing nearby keys.

I'd very much agree with the comments about how poor the default Samsung keyboard is and would advise anyone using it to change to pretty much anything else, I find it baffling that Samsung do this as the keyboard is such a crucial component and I regularly come across people who have either sold a Samsung phone or about to because they don't get on with the keyboard. Of course once I show them the alternatives they're usually very pleased particularly as some haven't realised touch screen typing doesn't have to be that bad.

Personally I'm a fan of hardware keyboards but with this iteration of phones there haven't been any decent options here in Europe (the Droid 3 which seemed the best of the keyboard sliders didn't get a release over here) so I have to give in and went for a Note. I've tried a few different keyboards and find Swiftkey my favourite as it seems to balance auto-prediction well, neither correcting words I don't want it to that often nor failing to correct words that I do need it to.

One major problem with Android keyboards is the utter lack of adaption for languages other than English. Trying to write German drives me up the walls since compound words are ripped apart more often than not.

And then of course even Android 4.2.2 STILL has no support for external keyboards (USB/BT) with other layouts than US English. Not being able to type fucking umlauts in 2012 feels like being thrown back 30 years into the past.

Yeah, and unfortunately for Android international language input is one of iOS's strengths.

I couldn't find a good Chinese handwriting input method for my Nexus S. I really liked the stock Jelly Bean keyboard for typing English and Spanish, but Google Pinyin IME was absolutely terrible. HTC Sense has good Chinese input, but it doesn't have a Spanish keyboard (it does have a Spanish dictionary, but no keyboard with easy access to special characters that you'd find on a keyboard in Spain).

I'm relatively new to Android so I don't have a sense of how secure these keyboards are. They can have full network access and that scares me. How easy is it for them to function as a key logger to capture sensitive data? I'll be staying away from these until I know they are safe.

Swiftkey is probably a safe bet. They explain what they use with the network access.

On the Nexus 7, I leave Hacker's Keyboard on at all times. On my Galaxy Nexus, I just use the AOSP keyboard. My SO recently picked up a Galaxy S3 and found Samsung's keyboard to be nearly as awful as the iPhone's keyboard (for her..she hates hates hates it), so I grabbed the APK for the AOSP keyboard and installed it. She was much happier after that. It will work on ICS or higher and costs zero dollars.

Have I mentioned how much worse TouchWiz is than stock JB? If stupid corporate email didn't require an unrooted/locked phone to work, I'd evict it in a second.

Nothing about Hacker's Keyboard? I figure Ars would at least partly have the type of audience who could use something meant for SSHing, as it supports a full-scale keyboard with proper tabbing support.

indeed. I'm using the hacker's keyboard presently on a 7" tablet. I love having the whole keyboard layout with punctuation marks and arrows.

Touchwiz on my GS3 and the default 4.2 JellyBean keyboard are fine for me. It's surprising how quickly I learned to gesture type though.

The one difference I noted was Touchwiz will not fully delete a wrong word guess, you have to delete out the wrong word character by character...which can get tiresome quick, but to its credit, the Touchwiz keyboard does a good job of guessing what I want to type.

I was a Swype user for years but recently switched to the Android 4.2 keyboard with gestures. Some key differences:

1. On Swype, if you draw a loop through a letter, you double it up. On 4.2, you just have to rely on the predictions.2. On Swype, if you draw straight up, past the keys, you capitalize your letter. On 4.2 you have to use the shift/caps button.3. On Swype, if you draw from any punctuation, such as period or comma, into the space bar, you get the punctuation plus a space. On 4.2 that is not possible.

That said, though, 4.2 feels more solid that Swype to me because of its far-superior predictions. I just wish it would duplicate the above functionality. There are some minor differences, too, like Swype having a comma key right on the keyboard, whereas with 4.2, you have to long-press period, but those are easy to deal with.

I also have the SwiftKey Flow beta, but I can't get the gestures to work on my phone. I've never been a big fan of SwiftKey, though.

I'd like to point out that Swiftkey also has exceptionally good autocorrect. I don't use its predictive features much at all, but it's the only keyboard I've felt comfortable typing at high speed on with thumbs, because I know the autocorrect will almost always know what I meant.

It's also worth pointing out that Swiftkey lets you lower the threshold for a press to count as a long-press, making typing numbers and symbols much, much easier. Few other phone keyboards I've looked at allow this, and the default on most is unacceptably long.

I just started using Kii yesterday, and it's pretty much the best keyboard I've used. It's a solid standard keyboard, and the ability to do accurate gesture typing is a plus. For tablets it has a great split layout too, and it has great support for other languages.

I just tried out Keymonk, but it's prediction ability appeared to be far below Kii right now...

carlisimo wrote:

Yeah, and unfortunately for Android international language input is one of iOS's strengths.

I couldn't find a good Chinese handwriting input method for my Nexus S. I really liked the stock Jelly Bean keyboard for typing English and Spanish, but Google Pinyin IME was absolutely terrible. HTC Sense has good Chinese input, but it doesn't have a Spanish keyboard (it does have a Spanish dictionary, but no keyboard with easy access to special characters that you'd find on a keyboard in Spain).

Have you tried Go Keyboard? That one works pretty well for Chinese typing and handwriting.

All these keyboards use QWERTY. QWERTY was not designed for mobile and results in buttons that are way too tiny for many people to type on accurately.

I use Big Buttons keyboard because the buttons are larger and my typing speed and accuracy jumped immediately.

Keyboards like this have been attempted several times, but they rely on a false assumption that normal QWERTY keyboards are fixed in size. They are not.

Most QWERTY keyboards avoid typos by understanding how you physically type (Swiftkey calls this a heatmap, and you can view it if you're curious), and also understanding that if you just typed the letter Q, you're more than likely going to type the letter U after it. Thus, accidentally pressing I or Y instead of U will still result in a U, making the U key "bigger" than it actually is (and in fact, bigger than even your "Big Buttons" keyboard).

The point is that the buttons do not need to be big, since modern keyboards are able to discern what you type even from pressing nearby keys.

That's the problem - the above methods spend all their time trying to correct mistakes after they happen.

Whereas larger buttons mean you don't have to make the mistakes to begin with.

QWERTY buttons were designed to be 5x as large as they are on your smartphone. That's why many people struggle to type accurately.

Larger buttons also make typing numbers much more accurate, because numbers can't use prediction/error-correction.

Plus everything is easier to read. QWERTY is right for many people, but some will prefer the larger buttons.

Just as an added note for swiftkey, you can disable the auto fill when you press the spacebar (which is what I did) so you dont have to backspace for uncommon sentences ;-)

Also note that it auto-inserts a blank after a punctuation mark by default. I really feel the editor should have spent some more time with it. It has a bit of a learning curve and it takes some time before you find your preferred settings, but it is really accurate and fast.

I use both Android and iOS and one thing that I have never understood is why cell phone makers completely get rid of the stock keyboard. It is perfectly possible for them to leave it but they always replace it. I have a Galaxy S 3 running 4.1.2 and the Samsung Keyboard actually managed to get worse than in 4.1.1. It used to have the most overly zealous autocorrect and now it has no auto correct at all.

I am currently using Swiftkey 3, but I would seriously prefer Google's stock keyboard. The premium Jelly Bean keyboard is not really the stock keyboard, if it was it would be updated by Google, not some developer.

My old Blackberry Storm had long-press to capitalize and I liked that better.

Thank you.

Tapeworm

Hacker's Keyboard, lol. You can set it so that it either offers standard alternatives (a -> áàäãåæ), capitals (a -> A), or both (a -> Aáàäãåæ), and maybe none too. You can also change how long a long-press takes (I have it set to 200ms instead of 500ms, which helps me keep up something close to 40WPM.)

I've been using MessagEase and enjoying it. It looks like an old T9 layout, but you swipe between buttons to select letters instead of pressing buttons multiple times. I've used SwiftKey and Swype, but I've found MessagEase to be more accurate (even accounting for SwiftKey's auto-completion).

I love Messagease too. Especially because I can use only my thumb, since you have 9 keys it's easy to target. And I also love that you can type any character -- lowercase, uppercase, numbers, special symbols -- with just one touch/swipe, no switching layouts.

Is it weird that I like the "T9" keyboard on my Note 2? I feel like it's much easier to use in portrait mode, and the landscape keyboard is still a normal qwerty layout. I sent more texts on my old clamshell than I ever did in the year or so that I owned my Atrix, and it's been nice to go back to the layout, even if the physical keys aren't there.

Handwriting analysis is still cooler, though.

Looks like it's just you and me loving T9. I actually keep my old Walkman featurephone around simply to compose notes on it, and its keyboard is even smaller than the one that appears on screen with my smartphones. T9 keeps everything in order. When I was first demoed my old first smartphone with Swype, the girl at the corporate store was very fast with it, but no faster than me with T9 on my old phone. It was a toss up who was more amazed: me at Swype's awesomeness or her at my mad texting skillz, lol.

There's a version called XT9+ or similiar on the Galaxy S I used to use and it was awful, though. Seems they peaked right before smartphones took off.

Having a 4x3 conventional keypad to text on was one of the features that swayed me to the HTC Droid DNA instead of a Motorola phone with superior battery life, to be honest. The HTC version works really, really well but it doesn't handle mistakes at all, like a trad T9 keyboard, whereas the old Galaxy at least had some predictive efforts to correct common spelling mistakes.

I'm going to give GO Keyboard a chance since it includes the 4x3 layout. I already use and love GO Launcher, Locker and Notifications, so what's one more Chinese app on my phone? ;-)

I am currently using Swiftkey 3, but I would seriously prefer Google's stock keyboard. The premium Jelly Bean keyboard is not really the stock keyboard, if it was it would be updated by Google, not some developer.

One major problem with Android keyboards is the utter lack of adaption for languages other than English. Trying to write German drives me up the walls since compound words are ripped apart more often than not.

And then of course even Android 4.2.2 STILL has no support for external keyboards (USB/BT) with other layouts than US English. Not being able to type fucking umlauts in 2012 feels like being thrown back 30 years into the past.

Actually, Android 4.2.2 does support extra layouts for physical, external keyboards. I have a Mac BT keyboard over here in Turkish layout. When I pair it with my Nexus 7, it just works in its native layout.

But I do agree that most predictive keyboards suck at varying degrees with languages other than English. Swype was the most accommodating among those I've tried. But on my phone I use the stock HTC keyboard with swype-like behaviour. And it is the best of them all - the dictionary is very good, it is not as meddlesome as the others, adding new words does not slow the writing as the others do, etc.

Unfortunately it is not available on Google Play. If it were, I wouldn't be looking for a good keyboard for my Nexus 7..

All these keyboards use QWERTY. QWERTY was not designed for mobile and results in buttons that are way too tiny for many people to type on accurately.

I use Big Buttons keyboard because the buttons are larger and my typing speed and accuracy jumped immediately.

Keyboards like this have been attempted several times, but they rely on a false assumption that normal QWERTY keyboards are fixed in size. They are not.

Most QWERTY keyboards avoid typos by understanding how you physically type (Swiftkey calls this a heatmap, and you can view it if you're curious), and also understanding that if you just typed the letter Q, you're more than likely going to type the letter U after it. Thus, accidentally pressing I or Y instead of U will still result in a U, making the U key "bigger" than it actually is (and in fact, bigger than even your "Big Buttons" keyboard).

The point is that the buttons do not need to be big, since modern keyboards are able to discern what you type even from pressing nearby keys.

That doesn't change the fact it is crazy to use querty on a touchscreen keyboard. There are no physical arms to get jammed up if I type too fast; I don't need a keyboard designed to slow down typing.

I haven't used querty on a physical keyboard for several years. It's annoying to be forced to use it on my phone/tablet.

It's high time we switched to a new text input, one designed specifically for touchscreens. I don't think swipe is the answer, I can type faster even on my iPhone's shitty keyboard than anyone I've ever seen using swipe.

With all the flexibility of a touch screen, It should be possible to meet or exceed the 120wpm I can hit with a physical keyboard. But not with querty.

Nothing about Hacker's Keyboard? I figure Ars would at least partly have the type of audience who could use something meant for SSHing, as it supports a full-scale keyboard with proper tabbing support.

That would be the Ars of old. Now they do not even have a dedicated Open Source editor.

One major problem with Android keyboards is the utter lack of adaption for languages other than English. Trying to write German drives me up the walls since compound words are ripped apart more often than not.

And then of course even Android 4.2.2 STILL has no support for external keyboards (USB/BT) with other layouts than US English. Not being able to type fucking umlauts in 2012 feels like being thrown back 30 years into the past.

Yeah, and unfortunately for Android international language input is one of iOS's strengths.

I couldn't find a good Chinese handwriting input method for my Nexus S. I really liked the stock Jelly Bean keyboard for typing English and Spanish, but Google Pinyin IME was absolutely terrible. HTC Sense has good Chinese input, but it doesn't have a Spanish keyboard (it does have a Spanish dictionary, but no keyboard with easy access to special characters that you'd find on a keyboard in Spain).

I use Go Keyboard for Chinese. It has lots of language plugins, making it very convenient for switching between more than two.

Android phones running 4.2 have a gesture based keyboard stock. It absolutely murders swype, and I can guarantee it murders every other keyboard out there. I can type with just my thumb almost as fast as I could touch type on a computer keyboard, and much faster than I could type on my old blackberry way back.